Inadvertent Disclosure (4 page)

Braeburn stammered.
“Respectfully, judge, the petition . . . well, it speaks for itself.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. Lawyers
loved to say that documents spoke for themselves. It was a meaningless,
nonsensical statement. What they meant was a written document was the best
evidence of its own contents, but that, too, was a pretty meaningless point to
make.

Judge Paulson’s brows came
together in an angry vee. “Counselor, are you telling me you aren’t prepared to
introduce anything into evidence?  You want to rely solely on the contents of
your petition to make your case?  No witnesses?”

Braeburn failed to keep his own
irritation out of his voice in his response. “Your honor, you know the folks
over at the Department of Aging Services are really busy these days. I couldn’t
in good conscience ask a social worker to burn an afternoon sitting in court
when it is so patently clear that Mr. Craybill needs to have a guardian
appointed.”

Jed started to rise from his
seat. Sasha pushed him down firmly with one hand and stood herself.

“Your honor, Mr. Craybill
requests that this petition be denied with prejudice. This is an outrage. This
court cannot grant the petition without giving Mr. Craybill the opportunity to
question a representative of the county agency. And where is the proposed
guardian?”  Sasha checked her papers for the name. “Was Dr. Spangler also too
busy to waste her time in court?”

“Good question, counselor,”
said the judge, nodding. “Mr. Braeburn?”

Braeburn stammered. “Your
honor, please. We anticipated that Mr. Craybill would consent . . .”

Judge Paulson chuckled. “Come
now, Marty. If you really believed that old Jed here would consent to this, we
need to have a guardian appointed for you.”

His smile faded, and he leaned
forward to catch the court reporter’s eye. He didn’t need to say anything; she
nodded to let him know she’d edit the remark out of the record.

Sasha had lost count of how
many times she’d ordered a transcript in state court only to find that the
official record of the proceedings bore nothing more than a passing resemblance
to what had actually transpired.

Braeburn straightened his
sagging shoulders and tried one more angle. “The county calls Jed Craybill.”

Sasha shot out of her seat.
“Objection. The county can’t compel my client to testify.”

The judge raised one eyebrow as
if he was asking her if she was sure. Of course, she wasn’t sure. She had no
earthly idea what she was doing. But, she did know she wasn’t going to put her
client on the stand to be questioned by opposing counsel. Especially not this
client. She had no idea what on earth Jed would say, other than it would
contain a lot of profanity. There was just no way she could allow it.

As she gathered her thoughts,
Braeburn pressed on. “Your honor,” he said, “that’s a baseless objection. This
isn’t a criminal matter. Mr. Craybill has no Fifth Amendment right against
self-incrimination here.”

The judge nodded.

Sasha saw her opening and
seized it, imaging she had Braeburn’s neck in her bunny mouth and was shaking
him back and forth like a ragdoll.

“First of all, Mr. Craybill
hasn’t invoked the Fifth Amendment. But, I note that he likely could. There is
ample Pennsylvania precedent for invoking in a civil case when the witness is
facing criminal charges. For example, in
McManion’s Gemtique v. Diamond
Dealers, Inc.,
a jewelry wholesaler was sued by a retailer for selling
counterfeit rubies. An employee of the wholesaler who had participated in the
criminal conspiracy invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination
in a civil suit brought by the jewelry store.”

Even now, four years later, it
burned Sasha that the court had agreed the dirty employee did not have to
testify, which had made her client, the jewelry store, accept a lowball
settlement offer, because the owner was afraid he wouldn’t be able to prove his
case without the testimony. But, the rights of the accused had trumped the
right of a small business owner to be compensated for the hundreds of thousands
of dollars he’d spent on red paste rubies.

Braeburn shot back.

“That is both true and
irrelevant, your honor. Mr. Craybill is not—at least to my knowledge—facing
criminal charges. Is there something Ms. McCandless would like to share with
us?”

Braeburn glanced over at her
and smirked.

“No, your honor, as far as I
know, Mr. Craybill is not facing criminal charges. He is facing something much
worse. Here we have an upstanding, law-abiding citizen who has worked hard his
whole life. And now, simply because he is older, the county is threatening to
take away his freedom for the crime of what exactly? Aging?”

Judge Paulson gave a half-nod.
Sasha imagined he was thinking that Jed Craybill had, at best, five or so years
on him.

Braeburn opened his mouth, but
Sasha rolled right over him.

“And,” she continued, “if I
don’t call Mr. Craybill, which I do not intend to do, the county has no right
to cross-examine him. They need to be able to make their case without him. If
they can’t, the court should dismiss the petition.”

Braeburn’s mouth flew open
again.

This time, the judge silenced
him with his palm.

“I am inclined to agree with
Ms. McCandless. However, before ruling, I would like to see briefs on the
issue, as well as on the issue of whether an allegedly incapacitated person
could be deemed competent to consent to the appointment of a guardian.”

The judge produced an iPhone
from a pocket in his robe and swiped the screen.

“Let’s see. We’ll want to get
this resolved before trout season is in full swing, eh, Mr. Craybill?”  He
glanced at Sasha’s client with the hint of a smile. “So, let’s have the briefs
contemporaneously in two weeks. No replies. Argument one month from today at
10:00 a.m. Mr. Braeburn, you’re on notice that you need to show up prepared to
present your case.”

“Yes, judge,” Braeburn said,
his head down while he scribbled the dates in his datebook.

Sasha pulled out her Blackberry
and thumbed in the deadlines. Then she wrote them on her legal pad. Her belt
and suspenders calendaring system gave both her and her malpractice carrier a
degree of comfort.

The judge stood. “On your way
out, Ms. McCandless, stop by the court administrator’s office on the first
floor. You’ll want to the get the paperwork so you can bill the county for your
time. Twenty dollars an hour, by the way. Don’t spend it all in one place.” He
chuckled and swept out of the courtroom.

Sasha packed up her bag while
Jed yammered at her.

“I’ll take the stand. I’m not
afraid of Marty Braeburn. He’s a pencil-necked twerp if I ever saw one. I have
the right to tell . . .”

Sasha shushed him as the
pencil-necked lawyer approached. “We’ll talk about it later, Mr. Craybill.”

Braeburn looked down at her
with a frown. “What a waste of resources you’ve caused, Ms. McCandless. Perhaps
you’ll take this time to reconsider.”

Jed started to push himself out
of his seat. Sasha put a hand on his arm.

“Perhaps, but I wouldn’t count
on it.” She gave the county’s attorney her sunniest smile to let him know his
scolding had no effect on her and went back to packing up her bag until he took
the hint and walked off.

* * * * * * * * * *

Harry stood at his window and
watched the feisty little attorney from Pittsburgh cross the square. She was
moving at a good clip, he thought. Probably wanted to make it back to the city
before the rush hour traffic started to clog up the roads.

He congratulated himself on his
cleverness as he shed his black judicial robe, shook the wrinkles out, and hung
it on the coat tree in the corner of his chambers. He loved it when a plan came
together.

And this one had gone off
without a hitch. As soon as the motion to compel discovery had crossed his
desk, Harry had sprung into action. He’d called and checked out Sasha with some
judges and lawyers he knew in Allegheny County and had gotten a unanimous report:
she was a straight shooter and sharp, too. He told himself she’d be able to
piece the thing together and would do the right thing.

Then, it had just been a matter
of scheduling the discovery motion for the same day as old Jed’s competency
hearing and praying that Showalter’s moronic client didn’t do the right thing
and turn over the e-mails before the hearing date.

Jed showing up, foaming at the
mouth, had been a stroke of luck. It had saved Harry the trouble of calling
Sasha in to chambers and concocting an excuse to appoint her as Jed’s counsel
after the discovery motion had been heard.

Her back disappeared around the
corner.

She must’ve followed the signs
to the municipal parking lot when she’d come into town, Harry thought. The
municipal parking lot, with its two-dollar a day parking seemed like a bargain
to out-of-towners. In reality, it was just a money grab. A relic from the past,
from before Springport had realized its rivers ran with gold. The city council
had erected the parking lot in an effort to bleed some money out of strangers
who didn’t realize there was ample free parking day and night in the center of
the small town.

When the lot had been erected,
it had seemed to epitomize cynicism and greed to Harry. Now it seemed downright
quaint and innocent, given the changes in town.

The changes. Thinking about the
changes in town made Harry’s stomach roil. Or he was just hungry.

He took his fedora from the hat
rack and shrugged into his tweed jacket. He’d step out and have a slice of
pecan pie at the diner, homemade by Bob’s wife. He might as well enjoy it while
he could. He reflected that the money-hungry leeches who had backed Bob up
against the wall and then bought him out of the diner would likely replace the
pie with salted caramel gelato or some such nonsense.

He turned off his desk lamp and
passed through the door to his secretary’s office. Gloria looked up from her
crossword puzzle.

“Judge,” she nodded.

“I’m going over to Bob’s,” he
told her. “Can I bring you back a slice of pie?  Or a gob?”  Gloria’s sweet
tooth was an open secret.

Her eyes widened, but she
resisted. “No, thanks, your honor. Oh, um . . . he called again.”

Harry watched as visions of
sugar plum, or more accurately two chocolate cakes with vanilla filling, faded
from her mind, replaced by ugly worry.

He patted her arm. “Now, don’t
you worry about them, Gloria. I’ve got it covered.”

She murmured something
encouraging, but he could feel her eyes, uncertain and anxious, following him
as he headed out for his pie.

CHAPTER 4

Sasha hurried to her car,
fueled by equal parts frustration and anxiety.

Frustrated because she’d burned
the better part of the day representing a cranky old man. And instead of it
being a one-time appointment, it now appeared she had an ongoing relationship
with her newest client. She’d given Jed a business card and tried to get a
telephone number in return. He’d claimed not to have a phone. No land line, no
cell phone, no e-mail address for old Jed. So, not only would she have to come
back for yet another hearing, she’d have to drive back up here to meet with Jed
if she wanted to do any kind of preparation.

Anxious because she had only
just gotten up to full speed. The first several months after leaving Prescott
& Talbott, she’d done all the things she’d sacrificed in her pursuit of
partnership. She’d slept in, taken long weekends, and had left her office at
midday to go skiing at Seven Springs. She’d helped out with the Valentine’s Day
party in her youngest niece’s preschool class. Caught up with girlfriends she
had literally not seen in years. And had thrown herself headlong into her new
relationship with Leo Connelly. It had been a glorious break. But it was over.

She now had an active caseload
of matters that required her attention. As a one-woman shop she couldn’t afford
to divert her time from her corporate clients to research esoteric points of
elder law just to satisfy some judge’s curiosity. Especially not at the
princely sum of twenty bucks an hour—not while clients like VitaMight were
paying her three fifty an hour.

What she needed was a
bright-eyed, eager-to-please young associate. Someone who would view a trip to
Springport as an adventure, not a giant time suck. Someone she could turn to
and say, “I need you to find a case that holds an allegedly incapacitated
person is not capable of providing informed consent to the appointment of a
guardian.” But, what she had was Winston, a virtual assistant who compiled her
invoices and sent them out to clients from somewhere in Nepal while she was
sleeping. It seemed unlikely he would be much help in this situation.

She would love to hand the case
over to someone local, like Drew Showalter. She’d run into Showalter at the
court administrator’s office, while she was being instructed to fill out the
form in triplicate and not to bill for travel time.

He’d been openly interested in
the incapacitation proceeding, asking her how she’d been appointed, when the
next hearing was, and whether she’d be back in town before then. She hadn’t
gotten a vibe that he’d been hitting on her, so she assumed he wanted to know
how to expand his practice in Orphan’s Court. She’d told him to try walking out
of court more slowly, but she wished she could have just handed him the file.

She sighed and reached into her
bag to pull out her parking ticket as she neared the municipal lot. The sun had
disappeared behind a clot of heavy clouds and the air had gotten cool. It
wasn’t the kind of day that lent itself to loitering outdoors; so, the cluster
of people near her car, parked at the edge of the lot adjacent to a small park,
caught her eye.

Drawing closer, she realized
they weren’t hanging out without a purpose; they were up to something. A tight
knot of two sign-waving, long-haired guys and two women with braids hanging
down their backs and flowing skirts was skirting the edge of the adjacent park
and chanting something about gas. Two more men were crouched beside the front
of her car. She saw a flash of silver in the smaller man’s hand.

“Hey!” she yelled, walking
faster. “Get away from my car!”

The smaller one started and
turned toward her.

“Corporate whore!” one of the
women shouted from the fringe of the park.

She didn’t turn toward the
voice; she kept her eyes on the two men who were closer.

The taller one stood and yanked
his friend to his feet. The shorter guy folded his blade and slipped it into
his pocket.

The group was breaking up. The
women and two of the men were drifting off to the right, headed into the park.
Apparently, they weren’t interested in joining their friends.

Two was better than six.

Krav Maga taught the best
response to a threatened attack was prevention or avoidance. Too late for that.
The next best response was escape or evasion. Only if that failed would she
stay and fight. And if she fought, she’d fight to win—not something she
relished. Especially not in fitted dress and heels, in a strange small town,
against six people. Two guys were more manageable.

But the better course would be
to get in her car and drive the hell out of town.

She aimed her remote key at the
door and jabbed the button. The car beeped. And then she froze.

Flapping rubber by her left
front wheel caught her eye.

She hurried to the front of the
car and stooped beside the door to inspect her tire. Slashed. She turned and
looked over her shoulder. The rear tire was in the same condition.

“Now what, bitch?” The taller
guy laughed and wailed a handful of gravel at her as she stood. It hit the hood
of the car and fell to the ground in a shower. His friend stood, frozen, arms
at his side.

Sasha waited until the tall guy
bent down for another fistful of rocks and made her move. She pulled the
driver’s door open, threw herself into the seat, slammed the door shut, and hit
the lock.

She had no idea if Springport
had a 9-1-1 dispatch but she took out her cell phone and keyed in the numbers
anyway, tilting her rearview mirror so she could keep her eyes on the
protesters or whatever they were.

“Nine-one-one. What’s your
emergency?”  A male voice, crisp and alert filled her ear.

“I’m in Springport. At the
municipal parking lot. A group of—uh, I don’t know—activists is here. They
slashed my tires. Most of them have run off, but there are two men. One is
throwing rocks.”

“Ma’am, Springport Township
does not have a local police department. That area is served by the State
Police out of Dogwood. I need to contact their dispatch. Please hold.” The
phone clicked in her ear as he placed her on hold.

Sasha gritted her teeth. The
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s patchwork of home-rule counties, townships, and
municipalities was many things. Efficient was not one of them.

Hurry, she thought, as the
phone rang. Once. Twice.

The hippies had come around to
the front of her car and were staring at her through the windshield.

She stared back.

Two white males, early
twenties, maybe mid-twenties at the oldest. The tall one was on the left. He
was well over six feet but rail thin. Light brown hair, long, pulled back in a
low ponytail. Those giant earrings that looked like black plugs in both ears.
His feet were planted in a wide stance, and he’d acquired a thick tree branch
from the park.

His friend was shorter,
stockier, and antsier. His dark hair frizzed out around his head in a cloud and
his brown eyes darted from the branch in his companion’s hand to Sasha and
back. He jittered from side to side in a little hop step.

Three rings. Four.

The tall guy smacked the branch
against his hand.

“Come on,” Sasha said aloud.
“Answer the phone.”

Five.

“Dogwood Station.” A woman’s
voice this time, overworked, not interested.

“Yes. I’m being attacked in the
municipal parking lot in Springport. Please send someone. I’m in the dark gray
Passat in the far corner of the lot. My tires are slashed. Two men are—”

“Ma’am. Ma’am,” the woman
interrupted her, no longer bored, her voice full of concern. Sasha heard the
clatter of keys. “The nearest unit is currently outside Firetown, approximately
25 minutes from your location. I need to put you on hold now and radio the car.”
The line went silent.

Within a minute, the dispatcher
was back. “Officer Maxwell is en route. What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Sasha McCandless. I’m . . .
not local.”

She’d been about to identify
herself as an officer of the court but thought the better of it. She never knew
how someone would react to a lawyer. A person who’d had a nasty divorce or been
ordered to pay damages after a car crash could carry a grudge against the whole
profession. After hearing her primary care doctor’s rant against medical
malpractice lawyers during her annual exam one year, Sasha had made a point of
always mentioning to Dr. Alexander that she didn’t do any med mal work.

“Okay, now, Sasha, you hold
tight until the officer gets there. Do not exit your vehicle.”

“Don’t worry,” Sasha said. She
had no plans to get out of the car.

As the call ended, the tree
branch smashed into her windshield.

Sasha flinched and braced
herself, but the glass held.

The tall guy pulled back to
take another swing. His friend caught his arm mid-swing.

“Jay, c’mon, let’s get out of
here. This is not peaceful.” He was still hopping from one foot to the other,
but he hung on to the tall guy’s arm. His voice was strained and loud enough to
hear from inside the car.

Jay tried to shake him off.

“Dude,” Jay shouted at the
smaller guy, “we need to stand up for Mother Earth.”

His friend shook his head. “No,
man, I’m out.” He dropped Jay’s arm and took off toward the park, kicking up
gravel in his wake.

Jay watched him go and then
turned back to Sasha.

He hefted the tree branch and
crashed it into the windshield again. His lips were pulled back, like a wolf’s,
and his eyes never left Sasha’s.

The stick bounced off the glass,
and a web of cracks spread out in front of Sasha. The next hit would finish the
job.

Sasha checked the rearview
mirror. No one else in sight.

She stared at Jay through the
pattern of cracks and calculated her options, ignoring the ache in the back of
her head. She could turn on the ignition, gun the engine, and see how far she
got on two—probably four—flat tires. But he might get the last swing in first.

Sasha sighed.

She placed her phone in the
center console, unlocked the door, and stepped out.

Maintaining eye contact, she
stepped around in front of the car and stood right in front of Jay, planting
her feet wide and bending her knees slightly. Looked up at him and hoped his
fleeing friend had the only knife.

“You want to mix it up?”  He
laughed. But she could hear the uncertainty behind it. This wasn’t part of his
plan.

She waited a beat while he
tried to decide: attack a five-foot-tall, one hundred-pound woman or walk away.

“Here’s what you’re going to
do,” she told the wild-eyed man in front of her. “You’re going to toss the
stick at my feet and then back away slowly.”

“Or what?”

She kept her voice soft and
even. “Or, Jay, I am going to beat you to a bloody pulp. Then, after you’ve
crawled away to lick your wounds, I’m going to track you down and press
criminal charges against you and your friend. And, then, I’m going to file a
civil lawsuit against you and beat you to a bloody pulp again in the
courtroom.”

He smirked at her, then feinted
like he was going to drop the stick. Instead, he lunged at her, swinging it
fast and wild over his head toward her.

Instinct told her to lurch
back, but training told her lean forward fast. Training won out.

Block.
She burst toward him, moving in
close and hit his upper arm with both hands while driving a knee into his
groin. A hard block. Sometimes that was all it took to disarm a person; the
force from the block would drive the stick from his hands.

Not Jay. He hung on tight to
the stick.

Lock.
Sasha slid her left arm over
his bare, hairy arm and right under his elbow, rotating his elbow up. With her
left hand, she clasped her right forearm and squeezed his shoulder with her
right hand. He tried to squirm free, but she pushed down firm on his shoulder
as her left wrist came up under his elbow, creating a lock and immobilizing the
stick.

Control
. From there, she stepped
forward, her legs behind his and took him down. He landed heavily on the
gravel, his legs splayed out and his arm twisted up. He clawed at her with his
free hand.

Strike
. She grabbed the stick and
wrenched it free of his hands. She popped his knee with it and then brought it
up and hit him three times in rapid succession in the head. She swung in fast,
short bursts.

He threw his hands over his
head to shield his face.

“Had enough?” she asked,
stepping back, but keeping the stick raised, ready to strike if he moved toward
her.

He struggled to get up, first
to his knees and then, unsteadily, to his feet. He stared at her and crabbed
backward for several paces before turning and running hard toward the park.